


Let It Burn

by TheLeftHand



Category: Loki - Fandom, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Child Death, Despair, F/M, Gore, Horror, Infinity War inspired, Mental Anguish, Norse Religion & Lore Compliant (mostly), Onset of Ragnarok, Past Infidelity, Rage, Revenge, Torture, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14697822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLeftHand/pseuds/TheLeftHand
Summary: Loki breaks free from his bonds





	Let It Burn

**Author's Note:**

> October 2018 edit:   
> I am eternally grateful to the lovely and wonderful rosarevolution for taking upon the task of being my beta! Her endless support and kindness has breathed new life into my withering muse, and slowly but surely I have started writing again.   
> My dearest, I can never thank you enough for all your help, love, optimism, glorious sense of humour and most of all for the precious gift of your friendship!  
> And all you guys, go and read rosarevolution's amazing stories: In Loki's Possession and Of Monsters And Men, they are true works of art!
> 
> ......
> 
> After the hole Infinity War opened up in my heart I knew I had to pour my anger and upset into words somehow but for the longest time I had no idea how. Then the image of this story came into my mind and it wouldn't leave until I sat down and put it to paper, so to speak. It took me a long time, among other reasons because I found it extremely painful to write, as I am sure most of you will find it very painful to read.
> 
> For everyone who's acquainted with this part of the Norse myths, the summary should be enough of a warning. For those who are not, read with caution, there is torture, mention of child death/murder and added gore and death. I have changed or you might say "adorned" the story a bit, so I apologise to those who don't approve of that when it comes to religious lore. I have done this with my deepest respect.
> 
> And last but not least, I want to say a massive thank you to all of you wonderful people, whom I have come to know through our mutual love for all things Loki, you have touched my heart and brought so much hope and brightness into my life, I love you all.

_Drip_.

Darkness. Cold. Loneliness. That's all there was around them - the silence barely broken by their quiet uneven breaths.

Except for that horrible sound, echoing off the cave walls.

_Drip_.

They had stopped talking to each other a long time ago. There was simply nothing left to say. They had talked at first, yes. Shouted, sobbed, screamed and cursed. Then they had wept and whispered.  
There was even that one time when he had heard her pray in the dark - silent tears rolling off her face and falling on to his, mixing with his own. He had called her foolish then - for who did she think was out there to hear her? Who was there to answer the prayers of the gods? He knew better, he knew that they were on their own. In her rightful indignation she had slapped him then, but not before she had made sure that she'd had a good grip on the bowl with her other hand.  
The bowl - she had never dropped it - that little vessel of mercy, crudely carved out of volcanic glass - she had not once spilled its contents, as she kept it steady above his head day after day, year after year, century after century. Not once had she failed to protect his face from the noxious poison forever dripping from the open maw of the enchanted snake his punishers had strategically placed hanging from the rocks above him to assist further in his torture.

  
So she held her arms up, no matter how hard her fingers trembled, no matter how heavy the bowl got, she never let it go - not even in the rare moments when she would fall into a light, nightmare-infused sleep.

_Drip_.

The sound of ruthless misery,  bitter despair and abject humiliation. The sound of his unjust punishment.

Measuring time in drops instead of minutes.

Mocking him.

Taunting him.

Filling him with blinding rage for which he had no outlet.

Once every so often the bowl would get full and she had to lower her arms and take it down, and walk away from him to empty it. And as if on cue a drop of the venom would drip down from the serpent's fangs on to his face and burn its way right through to his skull, like acid, leaving him breathless - teeth clenched, knuckles white, writhing in agony, wiping all thoughts and reason off his mind until there was only one thing left, one word, one thought that mattered - PAIN.  
The very ground beneath him would then shake with his suffering as he writhed and struggled to break free, razing villages and towns to dust, shoving rivers out of their way, turning mountains into piles of rubble - reshaping the very face of the Earth - yet the bonds would not yield.

He didn't want to tell her that he longed for those moments of pain. Because without the pain to wipe his mind clean, the memories would swiftly crawl their way back into his head, and he found their silent, insidious torment much harder to bear.

________

 

She came back as quickly as she could and resumed her position by his side, gazing blankly at the darkness around them, her pale features and vacant eyes illuminated by a sliver of faint light, cast by an opening, high above their heads, somewhere along the cave's ceiling.

The way he lay bound, no doubt in another deliberate strike of cruelty, he was unable to see that little window towards the sky, but he could sometimes feel a draft of wind come through it if a storm was raging outside, or feel the cold caress of a stray rain drop, and on a clear day the sunlight would fall through it and over her like a pillar of golden dust, dancing and shimmering over her cracked lips, always drawn tight in a stoic line.

That day, the light was dim and devoid of warmth and she wore the familiar mask of stale terror, sorrow and devastation on her face, placed upon her on the day he had been caught and made to face the wrath of the gods. And beneath the mask hid the anguish of a mother's loss - the grief had sharpened her pale features, and simultaneously the grinding boulders of time, relentless and unforgiving, had tumbled down and smoothed out the edges of the anger in her once piercing eyes.

Time. It had been a long time indeed. His clothes had been torn away while he had fought against his assailants, as they had held him down and tied him to the rock with...No, he couldn't bear to think of it - the memory made him gasp and cough, and he gagged on the foul bitterness of the bile rising up his throat.  
They had not bound her, there had been no need. They knew well that her nature alone would keep her tethered to him forever. Forever faithful, forever loyal - his polar opposite. Until her dying breath.

  
Her clothes however, had been stripped away by time itself. Her curves and the softness of her hips had been eaten away by the lack of substinence for what felt like millenia. Her hair, once luxuriant and rich like a heavy bundle of sun-ripened wheat, now fell below the sharpness of her frail shoulders like grey bundles of hanging moss and quivered like dried up cobwebs in the wind whenever she moved. The glow of her skin and the warmth of her breath had been stolen by the greedy shadows of the dark, damp cave that held them prisoners in its dank bowels.

  
She was a goddess, and just like him very difficult to perish, very difficult to kill, but Time, he knew well, never stopped trying, always hungry, never sated, and its bottomless appetite, much like a wildfire, knew no bounds, no limits, and respected no one. Time devoured its own children, or at least that's what he had heard the mortals say once. And it seemed that it would consume her too one day soon, and he knew that she would wither and die in front of his eyes like a frost-bitten flower and he could do nothing to save her but simply lie there in his own muck and groan and writhe in pity -  helpless, useless, cursed to witness the destruction and demise of everything he had ever loved, everything he had ever held dear, just like the world was cursed with him.

But time would spare him. He would endure. After all, one could not simply destroy Chaos. One could not fight fire with fire. What did he have to fear but entropy and the abyss of his own mind?

Some would say that darkness would be soothing in the predicament he had found himself in, that darkness would bring him quiet and oblivion. Perhaps even peace.  
But there was no peace for him - how could there be - when every time the new moon shrouded him in impenetrable darkness or he simply closed his eyes he saw his sons' faces. Her sons. One screaming while being torn apart by his brother's jaws, the other one yelping when the hunter's spear drove through him.

  
They had made her watch. They had made him watch her as she saw them die. They had made them both watch as his restraints were being fashioned out of their sons' still warm, lifeless bodies.

She never once said it was his fault. She never once said he should have kept quiet. She never once said she regretted taking the stitches off his bloodied lips that other time he had been punished for his insolent loquaciousness. He wished she did.

He looked up at her tormented face, framed by the darkness around them, where tears had been running down the same path along her pallid cheeks for centuries and had left scars like empty riverbeds, at that moment shimmering in the golden light raining on her from above.  
He looked at her shaking, scrawny arms, still holding up the bowl above his head.

She was still beautiful. He still wanted her. His body still longed to bury his yearning hardness into the silky calmness of her depths, always so accepting of him, always so welcoming, so forgiving, despite the treachery he had used to make her his, despite the many times he had scorned her after she had sworn him her undying fidelity.

There was another tear there then. Hanging off her lashes, scarse and thin, also eaten away by time.

What would he give to reach out and wipe it away?

What would he give to wrap his arms around her and pull her against his clammy chest.

To hold her. To comfort her. To give her promises that for once he truly intended to keep. To warm her up with the last surving embers of the fire that once dwelled inside him.

But the cruel bonds held him in place, unbreakable, unmovable, indestructable.

Something feathery touched his face and landed on his cheek where it rested for a long while before the little heat he had left inside him turned it into a resemblance of a tear.

"Wife..."

"You have to leave me now. You have to go."

"I'll never leave you," the resolution in her rasping voice sliced the air between them like a whip.

_Drip_.

Then another snowflake.

There had been way too many snowflakes those last few years, falling for way too long. Longer than it should.

He looked at her sunken cheeks and hollow eyes and wondered how her fading light and the unusually long winters were affecting the meek mortal world below. Would brothers rise against brothers? Would sons raise a fist - a rock - a blade, against their fathers? Would wives abandon their husbands and forsake their offspring once faithfulness departed from the world for good? Would all good things come to an end?

He couldn't bear to watch her like that. He couldn't let her throw her life away. He could not let her die for him. He had to make her leave. Chase her away. Save her.

"Go! Get out! Leave me!"

"I don't want you here!" he shouted, his voice breaking. "I don't want you! Leave!"

"You were one of many!"

"I don't love you anymore!"

She didn't waver. She didn't even flinch.

Perhaps he had said those things one too many times before during the last few hundreds of years. Perhaps his silver tongue had rusted.

He took a deep breath, as deep as the unmovable cruel band across his chest allowed him to, and spat out with as much malice as he could muster,

"I NEVER DID!"

She looked at him then, but instead of hardening with hurt or contempt, her face softened and for a split second the corners of her lips twitched in a ghost of the smile he had once, a long time ago, grown accustomed to, and even quite fond of seeing upon waking up by the tug and pull of her gentle fingers, tangled in the unruly curls of his flaming hair, every time he had decided to spend the night in their marital bed.

Then she leant down, took one hand off and ran it through his hair, leaving the other one dangerously shaking above his head, under the strain of holding the bowl level, and kissed his lips, still bearing the scars of his past transgression against the gods.

"You are mighty good at it," she whispered in his ear, "but you cannot lie to me, my Liesmith God."

Then it was his turn to cry.

She withdrew from him, an unfamiliar, eerie determination burning in her eyes.

"They took everything from us!" she snarled at the darkness around them, at the snake above his head, at the invisible confines of the cave, at the gods, at the world.

"What are you doing?"

"I can't do anything. I can't change anything. I am the everlasting pillar of stability, the keeper of faith."

"But you can. You can turn the world inside out. You can take them down. You can cleanse the universe with the heat of your fire. You can avenge our sons, My Love. You can avenge us."

"Our road is not a line, I see that now, it is a circle. A wheel. And you can make it spin again."

 

"I cannot even-" he stopped himself and hissed, for once reluctant to turn to profanity in his weakness.

"The bonds, remember? Nothing can break the wretched bonds! They will hold fast for as long as I hold on to the memory of our sons and I will never...I cannot...They tricked _me_ \- the Trickster!"

He shook his head, the words in his mouth as bitter as the bile rising up his throat again.

"They took the one promise they knew I would never break and used it against me. There is nothing stronger than my love for our sons. Nothing can ever lessen it, taint it. Nothing can break these bonds."

"There is one thing stronger," her voice came out lower than a whisper, yet it hit his ears like a thunderclap.

He looked up at her, exasperated, hurt, surprised even, at her audacity to join in the relentless cruel parade of mockery, pain and humiliation he was forced to endure. He looked long and hard at her and then his throat contracted and stifled his objection when he suddenly knew.

_A mother's sacrifice_.

She looked up, the faint light throwing ugly shadows on her gaunt face and her lips stretched unnaturally far in a disturbing, horrifying display of the howling, harrowing, destructive, formidable pain she had been hiding inside her fragile little body, inside her empty heart and hollow womb.

  
She raised her arms high above her head, resolve and mad glee in her wild glistening eyes, black and deeper than the darkest corner of the cavern that held them, and threw the heavy obsidian bowl down to the ground where it exploded against the rocks with an earsplitting screech of shattered glass, as her laughter, deafening and unhinged, yet strangely melodic, reverberated around them - a sound he hadn't heard in such a long time that he didn't recognise it at first.

He briefly saw his horrified face reflected in the jagged piece her bloodied hand was squeezing as she swung it with force he had long forgotten she possessed and sliced at her own throat.

"Make them pay, My Love! Make them pay for what they did to us! Let them burn! Let it all burn!"

"Free the Wolf, and gather the rest of your kin, and lead them. Lead them together with all the outcasts of the land, the exiled, those who have been wronged, who have been hurt, betrayed and banished. Lead them against the gods and burn their palace to the ground! Burn the whole world if you have to but make them pay for what they did!"

She was still smiling her haunting, blood-curdling, beautiful smile as all the blood drained from her face, from her lips, from her exposed gums, leaving them, cold, ashen and grey, as it spilt out hot and red in angry gushes out of the deep, ugly wounds on her neck.

Her blood splashed across his face and mixed with his tears, which for once burned his eyes more than the serpent's poison itself, as it freely dripped out of the creature's open jowls above him.

  
It then splashed all over the restraints that had eons ago become part of the very rock that he lay upon and melted them with the ease of a warm April shower falling through the last thin, forgotten dirty piles of snow idling under the shade of the emblers.

By the time he managed to wriggle his arms free of the rock - all weak and heavy and oddly tingling with his newly found freedom, and wrap them tight around her one last time, she was already dead.

________

 

He walked out of the cave and the winter sun blinded him with its cold brilliance, for he had not seen it in hundreds if not thousands of years. He faltered, held upright by nothing but pure incendiary, red hot rage and as his long-wasted muscles slowly healed, his body took in the faint warmth from the sun and added it to the growing fire inside him: the fire in his eyes that burned with the heat of a blue star, the fire in his belly that ravaged, and in a moment the hair cascading down his shoulders in angry curls was not hair anymore but dancing flames indeed, his skin - not skin but lava, his insides - rivers of molten rock and liquid metal, clashing together and forming thunderous mountains of hatred and sulphurus bile, and as the last of his wife's blood on him fizzled and smoked and burned away to ash in the wind, sardonically so did the warmth in his heart and he felt it cool down and shrivel upon itself in the agonising death throes of a juicy slug thrown into the blistering embrace of a bed of smoldering embers where it crackled and popped and hardened into a ball of black ice.

As he stepped down towards the sea of evergreen foliage before him and narrowed his eyes at the golden palace in the distance - the magnificent abode of the gods he had once helped build and was about to destroy, he thought he could hear her voice dancing in the breeze,

" _Let it burn_..."

"Wife?" he called.

The wind didn't answer but it swirled and twirled around the curls of his burning hair in a manner that made him smile and then he spoke back to it in the gentlest of whispers,

"I will, My Love, to the ground."


End file.
